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Ten years on, reef mystery remains

Drew Cratchley and Paul Osborne | January 23, 2008 - 10:39AM

By all accounts Sunday, January 25, 1998, was one of those
glorious tropical north Queensland days.

On that day US Peace Corps workers Thomas Joseph Lonergan, 34,
and his wife Eileen Cassidy, 28, took one last plunge into the blue
waters around the small coral head known as Fish City on St Crispin
Reef, 38 nautical miles northeast of Port Douglas. They were not
seen again.

The couple had come to the Great Barrier Reef after teaching in
a Methodist school in Fiji and had been in Australia only 10 days,
travelling to Cairns specifically for a diving holiday.

Later that year an inquest found the holiday almost certainly
ended in terror for the experienced divers after charter boat Outer
Edge left without them. Authorities were not notified for two
days.

Coroner Noel Nunan's inquest was presented with graphic evidence
of a deep sea nightmare and brought home the dark reality of being
adrift at sea.

Rumour and innuendo surrounded the mystery disappearance of the
deeply religious couple.

Had the young wife been the victim of an alleged deathwish by
her husband?

A diary entry by Tom Lonergan said he was ready to die, and one
by Eileen just nine days before the dive said "Tommy" had a
deathwish and hoped for a quick, painless death.

Lawyers for the operators of the charter boat Outer Edge raised
two theories at the inquest - that it could have been a double
suicide, or that Mr Lonergan murdered his wife before ending his
own life.

On August 3, 1997, Mr Lonergan wrote in his diary: "Like a
student who has finished an exam I feel that my life is complete
and I am ready to die. As far as I can tell, from here my life can
only get worse. It has peaked and it's all downhill from here until
my funeral."

On January 9, 1998, just two weeks before their diving trip, Mrs
Lonergan wrote a particularly alarming entry: "(Tom) hopes to die a
quick and painly (sic) death, and he hopes it happens soon. Tom's
not suicidal, but he's got a death wish that could lead him to what
he desires and I could get caught in that."

Had the couple faked their disappearance? Some reports suggested
they had been wearing wetsuits, diving hoods and gloves which would
have enabled them to last for days in the ocean.

Was a dive slate, found in mangroves at Archers Point south of
Cooktown, planted there by the Americans? The diving fraternity was
sceptical the tablet was genuine, suggesting it was part of an
elaborate "disappearance" hoax.

But chief investigating officer on the Lonergan case, Detective
Sergeant Paul Priest, was blunt in ruling out a murder/suicide.

"Being abandoned at sea, being circled by sharks, dehydrating
and slowly drowning is not a quick and painless death," Sgt Priest
said when the theory was put to him during the inquest.

He referred to a message scrawled on the dive slate - found five
months after the Lonergans' disappearance - as a "dying
declaration".

Dated Monday, January 26, at 8am, the message read: "To anyone
... can help us. We have been abandoned on Agincourt Reef by the MV
Outer Edge 25/1/98 3pm. Please help us ...to rescue us before we
die. Help!!!"

The Lonergans did not want to die, Sgt Priest argued.

Mr Nunan dismissed speculation the couple had faked their
disappearance as "really far-fetched".

Criticisms of the Outer Edge operation included there being no
designated lookout or divemaster, confusion over whether there was
a headcount and the failure to fill in the log.

The coroner found the couple had drowned and were probably eaten
by sharks, and charged Outer Edge skipper Geoffrey Ian "Jack" Nairn
with unlawfully killing the Lonergans between January 25 and
February 2.

He criticised the dive industry advisory code generally as being
"fairly loose", remarking that there seemed to be some resistance
in the industry to tightening it.

Nairn was acquitted in the Supreme Court in Cairns in November
1999 after a jury found him not guilty of manslaughter.

The verdict came as little comfort to the financially ruined
Nairn, who was been forced to sell his business to pay legal
costs.

The release of the film, Open Water, which was loosely based on
the Lonergans' story, temporarily reopened wounds five years
ago.

Ten years on, the case remains a thorn in the side of
Queensland's dive industry, with the worldwide publicity around the
couple's disappearance leaving a lasting mark.

"The worldwide publicity told everybody that we had strong rules
in place within Queensland and it also sent a message that if you
do something wrong people get prosecuted.

"What that said to the dive industry is that if you want
adventurous diving, go somewhere other than Queensland."

Subsequent reviews of the industry resulted in a number of
changes to safety procedures, the most important requiring two crew
members to carry out headcounts on each trip, which Mr McKenzie
said would prevent a repeat of the Lonergans' deaths.

"If that had been in place when the Lonergan case occurred it
probably wouldn't have occurred because they would have needed a
second person to also miscount it," he said.

However, the industry is struggling to compete with operators in
Asia and Micronesia, where regulations are much more relaxed and
divers seeking adventure are turning to in significant numbers.

"Our biggest risk is the cost of compliance," Mr McKenzie
said.

"It costs us a lot to comply with all the Australian and
Queensland laws, and as a result we're finding ourselves in a
non-competitive position when we're dealing with people that could
go to Asia or Micronesia rather than come to Australia."

The industry still faces the challenge of convincing tourists
the quality of Great Barrier Reef dives is worth the extra cost of
tougher regulations sparked by the tragedy of the Lonergans'
fateful holiday dive a decade ago.

"You can come to Australia and Australia will give you
world-quality diving ... and we do it very, very safely," says Mr
McKenzie.